The Problem with Christians

[brewer]

if I saw something supernatural happen, would my testimony not carry weight since I do have a degree in science?

Maybe, if you provided your credentials and we were not discussing hooey. And that's a big maybe.

Based on your posts, I'm not convinced that you can discuss science.

[Ryantology]

The problem with Christians is that they operate out of the assumption that their beliefs are automatically and unquestionably true, so it's really difficult to have a conversation with one as someone who does not make those assumptions.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

if I saw something supernatural happen, would my testimony not carry weight since I do have a degree in science?

You aren't fooling anyone here with that B.S., Fool! But go ahead and present your ideas to a respectable university and see what happens - that will at least be fun (for us) to watch.

[AJW333]

So using the above definition of "supernatural," abiogenesis qualifies because it violates the laws of nature which, without exception require all life to come from life. Abiogenesis violates this natural law.

There is no such natural law.  Now you're just making up question begging material.

Definition of natural law;

"an observable law relating to natural phenomena."

"All life comes from life" qualifies as natural law because this is the only way life occurs, unless you can give an example of non-life producing life.

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I am not most atheists. I have no qualms in stating with an authority of certainty that god does not exist.

Ditto!

Supernatural does not exist (nor god).  Some things may be unexplained (for now), but still natural.  Even if you want to invoke the 'god thing', god would be natural and anything it did would be natural, albeit not necessarily common. No god would be capable of violating their own rules of existence.

If God can create something from nothing then I doubt he would be prohibited from interfering  with his creation in whatever way he felt like.

[IATIA]

If God can create something from nothing then I doubt he would be prohibited from interfering  with his creation in whatever way he felt like.

What makes you think that god can create something from nothing?

[robvalue]

Holy shitmonkeys.

The problem with these kinds of conversations is that this guy already pre-supposes not just some vague, unnamed supernatural force, but an intelligent force who happens to specifically be a character in his favourite story book.

Even if we say "yeah whatever" and give him "supernatural" for free, I'd say it's impossible to get from that even to an intelligence, let alone God, and certainly not to internally inconsistent ramblings of ancient man.

We've already seen equivocations, pretending not to understand simple things and arguments from ignorance just to get to supernatural. It will take at least 3 more non sequiturs to get to even a generic Yahweh, let alone the particular version he carries around in his head.

I would also like to know what such people think they are accomplishing here. It's the equivalent of turning up at a murder trial and whispering rumours that the defendant "might have done something at some point".

[AJW333]

Was it an online degree? 

Nope. Full time, three year course from UNSW

Dude with a science degree claims wife and sister in law had a prophetic dream. Boys and girls, please identify which part or parts of that sentence are most likely false. 

Not sure why that seems so hard to believe. Science and faith are not mutually exclusive. Sir Isaac Newton was a big believer in prophecy.

Even if it was true that they has a prophetic dream, what was the purpose? lol! Did it stop the tragedy from happening?

The revelation was given so that my wife and SIL could pray for him, that he might not die. Which is what happened. Isn't God good!!!

Let's say that you do have a science degree, and it wasn't from a biased Christian school. Let's assume that your wife and her sister really did have a prophetic dream and they're not lying, they didn't unintentionally misrepresent any details, their emotions didn't make them believe they had a dream that never happened. gasp! Let's pretend that something "supernatural" actually happened. There will never be a scientific explanation, there is no natural explanation hidden behind the scenes, we are sitting here discussing something that the whole time has actually been a miracle. This actually predicted the future in a way that defies the laws of nature. I say "in a way" because we now do and understand things that hundreds of years ago might have seemed unnatural, but there are explanations now. So, let's be grandiose and go as far as saying that it predicted the future in a way that was miraculous, no natural explanation will ever exist, because the god did it.

Tell me something. Why? What was the fucken purpose?

I like this question. I like it because at least you are prepared to entertain the possibility that what I reported happened the way I said it did. Thankyou for that. You are dead right that you can't provide a scientific explanation for the supernatural. By their very nature, supernatural, miraculous occurrences defy scientific understanding.

In my understanding of the supernatural, not everything is caused by God. The Bible talks about "lying signs and wonders," that have nothing do do with him. They are caused by other malevolent spiritual forces.

As for the purpose? Whilst it may not seem like it to many, God is interested in our lives.

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It has nothing to do with susceptibility but probabilities. What would be the statistical chances of two individuals having the same dream about the same person concerning a future event that then transpires? fifty fifty? two to one? A million to one? A billion to one?

Let's say, for argument's sake, that the odds of that happening by sheer chance are a billion to one.
Out of every billion people on earth, one has such a dream at the same time as someone else in their close vicinity and it's temporally close to the actual dream "coming true".

How many people are right now on the face of this planet?
7 billion!
That means that, by sheer luck, 6 more people are having the same sort of prophetic dreams as your wife and her sister.
Still way more likely than god-did-it.

How about you learn some statistics?

If we look at the fact that there are multiple factors that have to happen, the numbers would be astronomically high against this occurring by random chance. If you want to ignore the numbers, that is your prerogative but I regard them as significant. Each to his own.

As I see it, you're the one who fails at properly grasping the numbers...

Also, "chance" is a word that describes our ignorance of all the factors that play a role in a particular outcome. Just because we don't know them all, doesn't mean they're unknowable (in theory), just unavailable in practice.

I'm not trained in statistics but I think a common sense approach should suffice. If I asked you to pick the correct statement out of two options, with a) having a 99.99999999% chance of being true, and b) having a 0.00000001% chance of being true, I daresay you'd pick a). So when I ask you to determine whether something is either by deliberate design or random chance, you choose the 0.000000001% option. I don't follow the logic. Could it be that bias/prejudice is at work here?

[AJW333]

Unless you can point to thousands of predicted events recorded before the fact your conclusion is simply invalid, ridiculously stupid and laughably useless.

You are trying to make the supernatural fit into a scientific model. It just won't work because supernatural events by definition violate the laws of nature and defy modelling.

[robvalue]

Defy modelling?

This is getting more ridiculous by the second. It has to be a wind up.

[AJW333]

I doubt that the Jews believed that the earth was flat since the same guy that used the four corners idiom (Isaiah), said  it was round.

Is 40:21 "Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth."

You ignore the meat of my message,  the fact that the passage you said predicted the creation of Israel did no such thing, and try (while failing dismally) to refute a small aside. To quote Napoleon "bah, I have not ime for such nonsense!"

The passage promised the restoration of Israel.

How is it that the regathering of the Jews from the furthest reaches of the globe to their homeland does not constitute a restoration of the nation?